


Ten Sephirot, Nine and a Half Fingers, Eight Nights, 44 Presidents

by Vulgarweed



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Character of Color, Jewish Character, M/M, Political Campaigns, Politics, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:22:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And when he was young he lost most of his right middle finger...which rendered him virtually mute."-Barack Obama, charity roast of Rahm Emanuel, 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Sephirot, Nine and a Half Fingers, Eight Nights, 44 Presidents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gayalithiel](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=gayalithiel).



**Malkut**

 

Rahm Emanuel isn't afraid of anything. That's the scuttlebutt on Capitol Hill anyway, and he knows that's what the rumors say because he put them there. It's a carefully manufactured image - there's a little Hollywood in the family after all, and male ballet dancers and Israelis both have to be scrappy. But it's also, for the most part, true: he isn't afraid of the Clintons or their enemies, of the Republican caucus or their enemies, of Mayor Daley and his enemies. He isn't afraid of the Chicago mob, the Washington press, or the blood-libel spreaders of the world.

But there it is sometimes. Fear. When he watches his children sleep and fears for the future of the world.

When he watches a colleague collapse under the weight of scandal - he's done his own share of juggling, after all, and it is perhaps not _completely_ inconceivable that someday he himself might stumble.

When he watches the election unfold, watches destiny rise up out of the crowds in a fog so thick it's visible. When he sees the naked desire for power dressed in its lovely costumes and dancing to its sensuous music, impossibly entangled with the desire to do good in the world. They're a mated pair, those two longings, as stormy as their bond can be, and Rahm Emanuel knows he plays a role, always. One wrong move and it all can come crashing down.

His old White House friend's blue eyes, his Illinois colleague's dark ones, both shine with a particular form of lucid madness. Oh, Rahm is most certainly ambitious, but not like _this._

When no one is looking, he hides under the desk.

**Yesod**

Barack Obama has been living in a dream. It's one of those dreams in which half of your mind knows that you are dreaming, and the other half is terrified to acknowledge this. One of these nights he's afraid he's going to lose his lifeline of detachment and start yelling at himself _what are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing?!?_

He is running. For President. Of the United States. Of America. He reminds himself of this fact in almost every speech, because he has to. It's like pinching himself, but not really. It doesn't wake him.

He feels vertigo almost all the time now, separated somehow from his own strangely slow-moving body; he watches his own long legs walking down long backstage hallways and climbing podium steps as if they belong to someone else, as if he is a child about Sasha's age, riding piggyback on some mysterious Great Important Man whose face he cannot see.

He is running. For President. Of the United States. Of America.

Most surreal of all, it is looking like there is a chance he might _win._

Would he wake up then?

**Hod**

Typetype. Typetypetypetype.

Barack remembers the satisfyingly forceful and mechanical click typewriters used to make. His iBook isn't quite the same, though he likes the gratification of seeing his words appear on a screen. He likes the cool blue shine; he works sometimes with no other light, though he knows it's not good for his eyes. Part of him thinks glasses would help, make him look less fresh-faced and boyish. His hair is rapidly graying. Good.

He wants a cigarette. He chews a pen instead.

He wants many things that aren't good for him.

He wants the forces of the world to flow through his fingers like words, shaping and articulating _things that are_ the way he knows they should be-deleting stupidities and cruelties, editing out war and hunger, writing the future full of empathy and rationality for a change.

He wants to be a _magus_, but he'll settle for being President.

My God, he thinks. What a tyrant I could become.

**Netzach**

Rahm is very much in the Loop, literally, so he is among the first to know of Daley's plan. One million people, gathered in Grant Park. Daley's just a mayor, so he doesn't have to hide his grandiosity. (Once, long ago, the idea of Daley running for President was floated; he shot it down with a snarl, insulted at being asked to take a step _down._ He already runs Chicago, which is the jewel in the crown; why have to pretend to care about, say, Oklahoma?)

There it is; Daley's acknowledged what everyone is beginning to know in their bones will happen. You wouldn't gather a million people in a park for an event if you didn't know it was going to be joyous. You wouldn't do it in a city noted for orgies of destruction celebrating sports victories if you didn't know this victory would be different.

Rahm can already see the CNN feed on the jumbotron of his mind: state after state, standing up to be counted. For the first time in more than a decade, he will stand beside a winner. The mad electricity of joy will shoot up and down his spine, barely contained in a good suit and a formal pose; power will pulsate in the sky and the ecstatic cheers of more than half a nation will burst over their heads like fireworks.

He'll stand still. Drinking it into his pores. Vibrating and poker-faced. It's more pure that way. And it will be awkward and fearsome, for this time it will be Barack, playing the role of the Rookie Hero, the Great Not-White Hope, and here's Rahm carrying around all this expertise, and he'll look up at Barack and see not an office or a symbol, but those long graceful hands. Those smiling doe-eyes. That sudden, repressed shiver of recognition.

Oh, Rahm wants in on this Administration. Badly. Things he wants badly cannot even be named, but they can be imagined. (How could he pin Barack against the wall? Barack's taller. Oh, but he never learned to use his toes, tall people never need to. Just a kid, right? Must have done something in college. That's how it was at Sarah Lawrence. You experimented, in the dark and on the grass, you groped and pretended you didn't until the other guy groped back and it was all yes, yes, yes from then on.)

Oh, Barack-star. You need a pitbull. That's me. Hold the lipstick.

**Tiphareth**

There is no violence. There is only exuberance, anticipation, eager kindness, hucksters selling PRESIDENT OBAMA t-shirts hours before the polls closed.

The world is watching Chicago, and Chicago performs well: a mighty howl of joy that echoes out across the lake and from there on into the aether, it was probably heard on the space station, where it rattled the gates of heaven.

It is decadently, sensuously, luxuriously warm for a November night. You can almost smell jasmine and the musk of lovers. You smell tears of joy and deep-dish pizza.

Barack is a column of trembling stillness as the truth sinks through him, wondering if on this night (why is it different from all other nights?) his voice could fail him for the first time.

It doesn't. And at last, he stands on the stage, fully occupying himself.

**Geburah**

Rahm is almost _angry_. Chief of Staff. No. He wasn't supposed to be _so close._ He was supposed to be the fire in Congress, the President's hammer - not his secretary, his valet, his cat-herder.

Oh, it's power all right. Power and honor. And yet..._yet_.

He almost says no.

"So how did you really lose your finger? Be honest. Gollum bit it off at Mount Doom, didn't he?"

"Wonderful. The leader of the free world is a nerd. What's next, mandatory Star Trek uniforms at state dinners?"

Barack's laughter shatters Rahm's rage, fierce and dark and warm, dripping down over him like honey.

And now Rahm feels everything he felt during the long, long campaign at all once, how every attack on Barack charged him with lightning fury. _I will work for you. I will fight for you._

You have my sword.

**Chesed**

He wants to be Chief of _Staff_. It wasn't something he was supposed to want. He didn't get advice from his rabbi on this one.

It must happen before Chanukah.

He reaches with his maimed hand, to remind himself he isn't afraid of anything. He could keep shaving bits off himself as long as he lives, as long as he keeps the one that _wants_, the one that's talking to him, the one that's guiding his hand up Barack's slim thigh.

The younger man (only slightly, only slightly) turns to look at him with eyes dilating and closing in surprise, those lips parting.

A long night. Paperwork covers the desk and most of the floors in the transition team's office.

Time freezes, and Rahm pushes his luck.

Barack is merciful, and the answer in the flick of his tongue across his mouth is _yes_, and the paperwork goes flying, disarranged, underneath them as they sprawl across the desk.

Pitbull or wildcat?

Barack is bigger. Rahm is faster.

**Binah, Chokmah, Kether**

The supernal triad on the Tree of Life is closest to the Divine, and it is not for a pathworking mortal to attain those heights and live. There is an Abyss to cross first, the ghostly Da'ath, and few are called this far.

What to do with an insatiable ambition? A dream deferred _definitely_ explodes. There is a wind that rises in that office room, papers blowing about like a blizzard, as if the window has been breached. It hasn't; the cold Chicago night is still and peaceful around them, full of its spires of lights.

The President-Elect of the United States is yanked down into his reality, his concreteness, his _body_, viscerally and violently, his necktie wrapped around his Chief of Staff's hand, squirming tongue in his mouth, thighs pushing between his own as he's shoved back down on his own desk.

It isn't the Oval Office - yet. It's the City of Big Shoulders, home of scrappy, forceful politicians who pin each other down metaphorically all the time. Usually not so literally. Barack gives a cry of complicated sensations as Rahm crawls over him, licks those famous ears, bites his neck. His voice is thick and rich; his scent polished and animal, clean and longing.

Rahm doesn't care about the price of the shirt he's tearing, the pants he's wrinkling, the Presidential boxers that are probably going to get stained as he goes down.

He looks up, grasping Barack's hip painfully.

"Grab my hair," he whispers. "Dominate me. Fuck my mouth. _Hard."_

It's a very undomineering squeak, but Barack's erection noticeably swells and gets even more impressive, and breathing hard, he does as he's told. Once he's been ordered to take command, it comes naturally. Rahm knew it would.

Barack groans just a little, trying to stay stoic as Rahm's lips and tongue works, as his throat encloses, as the push and pull sounds slick and wet and _filthy_, hot and enclosing. How _dare_ that little...how dare he reduce him to this...he _dared._ The audacity of audacity.

He pulls that soft tufted gray hair cruelly, and he comes violently at the side of those shadowed eyes staring up at him...bold and unashamed and fucking _smug._

Rahm swallows.

Barack trembles, trying to hide how long it's going to take him to recover.

"Are you sure that was...kosher?"

"You know that's the oldest joke in the Hebrew language, don't you?"

"Sorry....I....sometimes I think I'm clever."

"You are, you fucking goat-herder bastard. But not as much as me."

"I see. Will this happen...again?"

"If you try to stop now, the Secret Service will have to kill me."

"All right then. C'mere now."

It is not just the Constitution they will take an oath to defend. And it is not just power that will bind them, not just the awesome weight of responsibility aging them, not just the wind of an era at their backs.


End file.
